A Step Closer to Creating Artificial Life

slick_shoes writes to mention that Italian researcher Giovanni Murtas has taken another step towards creating life in a test tube. "To the untrained eye, the tiny, misshapen, fatty blobs on Giovanni Murtas's microscope slide would not look very impressive. But when the Italian scientist saw their telltale green fluorescent glint he knew he had achieved something remarkable — and taken a vital step towards building a living organism from scratch. The green glow was proof that his fragile creations were capable of making their own proteins, a crucial ability of all living things and vital for carrying out all other aspects of life."

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For those with Academic Paper subscriptions

[starseeker]

For those who want more meat, these look like places to start:

Pier Luigi Luisi, Francesca Ferri and Pasquale Stano Approaches to semi-synthetic minimal cells: a review
http://www.springerlink.com/content/y218jk71n1k407 85/

Giovanni Murtas Question 7: Construction of a Semi-Synthetic Minimal Cell: A Model for Early Living Cells
http://www.springerlink.com/content/9p404l8247968n 72/